Tuesday, October 23, 2007

When I drink alone I prefer to be by myself.

CHICAGO BLUES

I will say (I say it often, actually) my drinking did, in fact, disturb me. I was ambivalent about quitting. I lacked drive. It is hard to know whether mine is an addiction or a weak moral will. When I left Chicago, it was on a clear, sixty-five degree morning in late July. I asked the valet who delivered my car if the beautiful weather was typical. He took the dollar from my hand, flicked his cigarette to the pavement, and snickered.

Night before last I’d arrived in Ohio, a Howard Johnsons just east of Indiana. Conveniently, it had a little lounge attached, a dank hovel with a medium length bar and six or seven candle lit tables, a few cheesey looking cushioned chairs scattered around. Three or four people sat at the bar. The once red carpet had by now been so worn and soiled it appeared in every way more like a dark, odious sponge tacked to the floor.

I was swigging my second long-neck when four skells I’d seen earlier came through the door. I’d noticed them unloading their truck as I entered my room. They must have arrived about the same time I did. Wearing flannel and leather, bearded and loud, they now found a spot at the end of the bar. No one but me seemed bothered.

I wanted to sit quietly. I simply wanted to hear the songs I’d played. Taking my beer, I moved to a dimly lit table in a
corner near the jukebox. The red-orange chair I’d squeezed my butt into hobbled on uneven legs. I tried hard to block out their agitating voices, but the four cretins at the end of the bar were so voluble that others had to talk over them to be heard. The song playing softly was barely audible then and something ugly was growing inside of me. I cranked down another gulp. I sneered at the four assholes intruding on my space. Something about them triggered aggressive and angry impulses. My reaction felt territorial. I swashed down the rest of my beer.

The song I had been trying to hear was playing softly, woodwinds and strings, Saxon, folksy, something John Barleycorn. The loud, gruff stupidities rising from the end of the bar, the music overrun and barely audible, I grew angrier, fidgeted, stared. Then it dawned on me, a peculiar self-revelation. Maybe the music got into me, entered in a way that smoothed over my discomfort. Or maybe it was that I knew, if confronted, those four mutts would take turns kicking my sorry behind around the parking lot out back.

Whatever the cause, it was a stark moment of clarity that amounted to this: they were not the source of my agitation. Whatever was going on, this was all about me. My discomfort had something to do with the very fact that I was here. That I was drinking when I knew (even now I want to take that word back, replace it another like “suspected” or “believed”) but yes, I knew I should not be drinking. I also knew that if one of those gorillas caught me eyeing them, there might be an unpleasant price to pay. I did not always get in trouble when I drank, but whenever I did find trouble, I’d usually been drinking. I had no intention of getting my ass handed to me by four local rabble-rousers outside some two-bit Ohio lounge. So I set the bottle on the table and returned to my room, a little sad, a little lonely, dreamless, yes, but none the worse for drunken impulsivity.

The next evening I landed, still in one piece, in downtown Chicago. The only room I could find was at the Hilton. “Probably the last room in town,” the clerk informed me. By the looks of things, she had spoken true. Two other less expensive hotels I’d stopped at had been all booked up. The Hilton’s lobby was packed with conventioneers (a medical convention I’d later learn). I took the room. Once settled, I saw it was nearly time for dinner. I determined first to go for a walk, look around a little, and see where my travels might take me.

I’d heard Chicago was a lot like New York. It’s not. That’s not to say that my discovery of a nearby park fronting horizonless Lake Michigan was not captivating. Certainly, it was very inviting with couples walking and joggers passing by, children playing everywhere. But when I made my way back into the city all I discovered there were depressed little streets and generally poor quarters, empty storefronts, brick walkups, an occasional wine store, auto-body shop, or Chinese takeout. Not far from my hotel I spotted a little watering hole whose signage carried a name I knew. I’d been listening to Buddy Guy in my car, on and off, since I’d left Jersey. It was his name I saw above the entrance. Three times I walked past before deciding to head on in.

I couldn’t believe the luck—Buddy Guy’s Blues Club! When I had first seen it I thought it was a gimmick, that his name had been used only as a draw. As things turned out, he really did own the place. Legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy. Framed pictures and concert posters, a souvenir vendor selling novelities and t-shirts bore witness, as did other memorabilia, guitars the color of “cherry-wine” and gold records plastered all around.

I took a table situated before a well-lit stage where a little blues ensemble, a southern band, was playing, not too raucous, almost gently, brushed symbols and a slide guitar with bass. A waitress approached. Despite my Ohio moment of clarity, I remained incapable of reconciling my presence there in Buddy Guy’s with the thought of a diet cola. I ordered a bucket of frogs-legs and a brown ale.

Several brown ales later, I was feeling light. I paid my bill and left. That I’d entertained the possibility he, Buddy Guy, might be hanging around shaking hands, signing autographs, maybe even playing a set made me feel a little foolish when I considered it. I wouldn’t be hanging around there if I didn’t need to either, if I had someplace better to be. I stepped into a wine store, picked up a decent pinot noir and a corkscrew.

Back in my room I felt tired. I was sweating. The light stabbed at my eyes. They felt wooden and heavily drawn. I felt their weight settled just beneath my brow and distributing itself in a tight pattern along the flinty scar-line just under the skin. I dimmed the light, drew the cork from the bottle, and poured some wine into a plastic cup. I prayed some words. I paced. I drank myself to sleep.

Now it was Sunday, and I was pulling out of the parking lot. By evening I would arrive in Ellenville, Iowa. I debated whether I would drink there. I should not. A voice on the radio revealed that the unusually cool weather would end by mid-afternoon. I saw the valet snicker in my mind and rolled the window down. A wall of red tail lights glared at me. I rolled along in slow city traffic, popped in a Buddy Guy CD, and settled in for another long traveling day.

Monday, October 22, 2007

lo lo lo lo lola . . .

"You are a manly man," she said.

How would it have gone were I to have returned,
"And you, my beauty, are a manly woman?"

Not well, I suspect.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Operator, can you help me place this call?

The Old Woman

By the time the habit of loneliness settles in and all around, it is like having already starved. There is no more hunger than there is life to be hungry for. It is a deadly habit, having exchanged black for the occasional gray that intensifies and recedes around the early white lie. Sometimes it is a desperate call, moved by terror, of the senses that hear the air strung with maleficence, that see the lonely squiggles pressing themselves against the television screen, trying to get out. Trying to get out the old woman picks up the phone where voices used to live.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Hello It's Me

THE CALL


I was caught off guard when I heard her voice on the phone. “How are you, Michael?” she said. “It’s Glea.”

I knew her voice, but hearing it felt alien. It sounded to me like a voice one would avoid if they could; a voice belonging to a neighbor who’s been crouching in your garden every evening at dusk, watching as you walk around your kitchen in your underwear; the person who you knew had poisoned your cat, though you could not prove it, and who called because they knew you knew but couldn't say anything about it. I couldn’t tell right then which of us was being creepy.

I responded with shortness. “Glea.”

Glea Carroll of the McNally Agency had been a great support when I was marketable. She stayed in constant contact, putting me in touch with publishers and editors, people she said she knew I’d click with. As my agent Glea facilitated many good things for me. But self interest clung to her like the smell of something burning. I was never crazy about that part of her, and now that I was no longer a hot commodity I discovered my instincts about her had been justified.

“Michael, I know I haven’t called. But I have been thinking about you.” She must have detected the blank recognition, the plain lack of response in my voice.

“I’ve been thinking about you too,” I said finally.

“I realize it’s been some time.” She spoke in clear, distinct tones.

Damn, I thought. I hoped like hell she didn’t feel sorry for me. I wanted to savor my resentment. Across the room the cat began hacking and then puked on some papers I’d laid down when the phone rang. “Goddamit,” I growled through crooked teeth.

“Is this not a good time?” Glea asked. “Should I not have called?”

“No. It’s fine,” I told her, “my cat. How have you been?”

“I’m well,” she said. Glea , always proper, never said "I'm fine," or "I'm good."

“I’m also well,” I responded flatly. “To what do I owe the honor, Glea?”

She hesitated, only momentarily, and then explained why she called. She knew I’d been in a rut since the accident. She thought she had something I might be interested in trying. “You’re not drinking?” she asked at one point.

“No, I’m not drinking,” I said. I was lying. I’d turned into a morning drinker. Mostly wine when I stayed home. Beer if I walked down to play the juke box at the Top Hat where Milna poured drafts and flaunted her huge rack behind the bar. On days when I’d stop caring altogether, often after not sleeping, I’d drive instead of walk. The accident seemed, at those times, remote. Maybe I was remote. The walls of my apartment looked pale to me. “Why do you ask, Glea?”

“I have a contact at Iowa,” she said. “Do you think you’d consider putting together a workshop for them? They’re interested in having you. I can put you in touch.”

In touch was something I hadn’t been in a while. I touched my face. “Teach what to who?” I asked.

“We can work all that out,” she said straight forwardly, as if she had all of it already planned. “You’re a name. Published. And they’re paying.”

The offer was a far cry from television interviews and book signings. I looked across the room and squinted at the stack of bills on the desk. “I could use a change,” I told her. “Iowa. How much and what do I need to do?”

“Let me make some calls,” she said, and we ended it there.

I scribbled her name on one of the refrigerator lists, then grabbed my keys. It was Friday. Milna typically wore a skirt on Fridays. She’d be working till noon.